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For people not from the US, selective defunding of education was part of a strategy begun in the mid-1800s to further disenfranchise free blacks around the nati
by washadjeffmad 6y ago
For people not from the US, selective defunding of education was part of a strategy begun in the mid-1800s to further disenfranchise free blacks around the nation.
By shifting schools to local funded, areas with multiple (segregated) school systems used "plain and simple economic reason" to shut down excess schools to save cost, somehow always the black ones. The proof that blacks could not lift themselves out of these situations was used as further proof of their inherent inferiority, not the systemic racism they faced.
To compound this, states that organized "literacy tests"[1] to vote rarely required them for whites. Further removed from the ability to affect their circumstances, many black communities languished for generations.
As a natural extension of this, many school districts in the US are still operating under unequal resources while their constituents' tax revenues go towards the landscaping and infrastructure costs of wealthier areas, while the blame is placed on the victims (eg- "absent parents" who are largely working class victims of exploitation from extreme rent seeking, over-policing harsher monetary and legal penalties, payday loan traps, and other things you don't encounter in wealthy areas).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
- ggreer 6y agoBaltimore spends $16,184 per pupil per year.[1] That places it 3rd of the 100 largest school systems in the country and far above the national average of $12,201. This is not a funding problem. 1. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/school-spending.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/school-s...
- prepend 6y agoImagine how much they would have if they weren’t systematically defunded in the mid-1800s.
- washadjeffmad 6y agoSpend per pupil isn't meaningful beyond showing administrative efficiency. Given the outcomes, intentionally and severely failing students to game well-meaning initiatives smells like high level corruption a la the Cash for Kids scandal. Someone's getting that funding, sure, but it's not the students or their families.
- dkhenry 6y agoI understand and appreciate the overt racist actions that have happened in the past, and maybe I am just jaded at this point, but saying this is caused by historical racism is giving a pass to the corrupt and failed system that has just given this kid a one way ticket to a lifetime of poverty and incarceration. This isn't the fault of some racist city manager in the 60's who diverted funds away from this school. There is a whole building full of teachers and administrators that are directly responsible for this. Teachers in this situation have an impossible job, as it stands they will never be able to make kids with this kind of background succeed, and they haven't been able to for 40 years. Their culpability begins because they are willing participants in this education theater. Its funny that the teachers union will put their foot down about not participating in school because of Covid, but they are very content to participate in a system that condemns a majority of the kids to a futureless life.